Great Giana Sisters, The
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Description 

One night, when little Giana from Milano was fast asleep, she had a nightmare. Giana found herself in a wondrous world with strange creatures, who want to prevent her from going home. Here everything was huge and strange. Giana can only leave this world, if she finds a huge jewel. On the way she can collect diamonds and many extras. Fortunately she is not alone, because her sister Maria has also this dream. The world consists of 33 levels and in the last stage Giana can find the needed gem, to return to her world. 

 Design 

2-D Screen, whose contents scrolls to the left out of view. Sound and music are well harmonized with the game. The sprites are cutely animated. Very good playability by the exact joystick query. If played with two players, the second player steers Maria, who has different colour of hair and clothes. 

The unofficial successor was Hard'n'Heavy, which originally was issued under the title "Giana Sisters 2: Arthur and Martha in Futureworld". 

Manfred Trenz mentioned in a forum, that the idea of a Mario clone came from the then label boss, and did not, as often assumed, arise by his initiative. 

After a plagiarism trial by Nintendo, Giana Sisters was taken off the market, because it was, according to Nintendo, too much based on Super Mario Bros. The idea of the sequel has been dropped, and the original Giana Sisters 2 later finished as Hard n Heavy, where the players are "Heavy" and "Metal", 2 robots that trapped on the Mars. The game graphics and gameplay didn't get the same reception as its predecessor, but the music in the game by Chris Hülsbeck is widely considered as a classic too.

 Controls 

 The game is controlled by joystick in port 2 of the C64. At every re-start you can choose whether to play with Giana (press 1 or fire button) or Maria (press 2). With the joystick you steer to the right or left and you can jump, when you press the joystick upwards. The longer you press, the longer Giana stays in the air. By combining running and jumping, longer jumps are possible. 

 The fire button comes into play, when you make a small punk out of Giana or Maria. The hairdo is hidden in one of the stones. Now she can also destroy stones and has the possibility to find thunderbolts later. The thunderbolts are activated by pressing the fire button. There are three thunderbolts: the simple bolt (vanishes with the first contact with a wall), the double bolt (the shot is reflected by the walls)and the strawberry, which makes the shot hit the nearest target automatically, also through walls. 
 In the highscore list the name is entered over the keyboard and finished by pressing the "Return" key. By pressing "F1" the highscore list is saved on disk. By pressing the fire button after you have finished entering the name, the game is restarted without saving the highscore list. 

 Tips 

 With the target-searching shot (strawberry) you have to be careful! Some monsters "catch" this shot and are not killed by it --- instead the shot comes to rest on the back of the monsters. For this time you cannot shoot again! 

 After the strawberry there is an alarm clock, a bomb and a water drop. The alarm clock and bomb are activated by the space key. The alarm clock temporarily stops the time (which is practical, e.g. to jump easily over to bouncing balls), the bomb kills directly all killable monsters on the screen and the water drop makes immune against fire (Be careful: in some versions the water drop doesn't work properly). Alarm clock and bomb have to be collected again after use. 
 In the game there are hidden WARP-spots. 

 By accident I detected one of them during testing at the beginning of the 3rd level. By jumping against an invisible wall at the beginning of the level I was directly warped into level 6. 
 Another warp stone is in level 8: Destroy on the bridge of the boss enemy directly the first brick above you and jump into the upper left corner. You end up in level 11. 

Warp-Blocks

Warp-Block from Stage 3 to Stage 6 	
Warp-Block from Stage 6 to Stage 9 	
Warp-Block from Stage 8 to Stage 11 	
Warp-Block from Stage 17 to Stage 20 
Warp-Block from Stage 19 to Stage 22 	
Warp-Block from Stage 22 to Stage 25 	
Warp-Block from Stage 25 to Stage 28 	
Warp-Block from Stage 28 to Stage 31 

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 Cheats 

Pressing the keys ARMN at once => jump into the next level! Alternatively you can add the I key: ARMIN, which reminds of the developer Armin Gessert. 

Pokes 

The following pokes can be entered after a reset: 

Disk version 
poke 8257,173	$2041,$ad	unlimited lives
poke 7450,000	$1d1a,$00	unlimited time
poke 6664,096	$1a08,$60	bridges indestructible
sys 2127	$084f		start without highscore load
sys 2098	$0832		start with highscore load

Tape version 
poke 8207,173	$200f,$ad	unlimited lives
poke 7400,000	$1ce8,$00	unlimited time
poke 6614,096	$19d6,$60	bridges indestructible
sys 2080	$0820		start

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1987 GO!
Status: Full Game, Findability: 5/5

Coding: Armin Gessert
Graphics: Manfred Trenz
Sound: Chris Huelsbeck

The Commodore 64 has produced many a classic and well talked about game in the past, and this game truely does fit into that category. Unfortunatly, its often well renouned for the trouble it caused, rather than the playability of the game itself… though the C64 community doesn’t forget either.

The Great Giana Sisters was created by Armin Gessert and had graphics produced by the future creator of the Turrican series, Manfred Trenz back in 1987. At the time, Super Mario Bros was at a all time high in the craze stakes on the NES console, and Armin created his own clone in great style.

A very cunning swap of ‘Great’ for ‘Super’, ‘Giana’ for ‘Mario’ and ‘Sisters’ for ‘Brothers’, proved too much for the legal eagles at Nintendo, whom, heavily protective of their much loved plumber, took legal action to prevent the sale of the C64 clone.

Nintendo were very slightly late in their prevention however, and the game managed to get on sale for a week, before being ripped from the shelves. Leaving a rare selection of copies to have got out into the real world. One such owned by myself thankfully (Cover scans coming soon), and by lucky others in the C64 community. A true rarity which countless C64 people will tell you when you mention Giana.

The game itself is a very playable incarnation, although not quite having the same content or impact as SMB (The swimming levels are missing), it does give it a run for its money. However, it comes with some superb music by Chris Huelsbeck (Especially on the intro screen) which plays throughout. The game is well worth checking out and playing.

For the Mario pureists out there, a cracking group did once modify the graphics and create a hacked Mario clone, but albeit only the main sprite really changed.

A real classic for wrong and right reasons.

Contributions: Ian Osbourne, Midgard, Fabrizio Bartoloni, Retro Gamer magazine

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The graphics you see in the final version is different from the WIP stages:

“I also found creating the main character [Giana] to be quite a hard task. It took me a very long time to find out the best look for her. I had lots of different variations but there always seemed to be something missing. It  just took a really long time.”

“I ended up having to draw three different title pictures in the end,” recalls Trenz as he looks back at the constant scrutiny that their game was under. “The first one was deemed to be far too cute, the second one was apparently far too gloomy and it was finally the third effort that ended up satisfying the management.”


http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/great-giana-sisters/
